[QUESTION] Art vs Coding

[Repefe]

It can be anything from ignoring one of your light sources to leaving a polygon structure that won't deform correctly. There's also lazy things like trying to speed up frames rather than redraw them to get the timing right, or designing something that unintentionally defies the expectation of the consumer confusing rather than informing.

That's all illustration more than the broader term "art" though. I don't really do "art", so I couldn't say.

Yeah, that is very similar to what programmers get fuck for. Either when somebody reviews the code or when the programmer himself has to go back to the code and modify it. Making lazy code almost always comes back to bite you in the ass.

[Pull My Finger]

Programming is more about quality while art is more about quantity.

How so? That's a nonsensical thing to say.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yeah, that is very similar to what programmers get fuck for. Either when somebody reviews the code or when the programmer himself has to go back to the code and modify it. Making lazy code almost always comes back to bite you in the ass.

So true ... especially when you start doing actuall programming work and in your innocent youthful hubris you think that "this feature" will never be needed and you don't structure your code in a way that it can be easily modified later.

That being said, it's actually funny how many simularities there are between commercial art and programming. I never really thought about it that way.

[ComputerNerd]

Art will function the same for everyone.
Coding might have to take into account different operating systems, different hardware etc.
Art generally should not need debugged, as it should I believe be relatively easy to test if it does what it is meant to do, as the number of test cases would be more limited.
Art does not have a cascading effect on other areas, as the recent taint issue highlighted.
There is still some vanilla code lurking around that was handling a now non-existent Micromenu button for the map, for instance.

[OzoAndIndi]

Once again, sorry if this is the wrong section for this type of a question.

My question is: Which takes more time? The art aspect of WoW or the coding ( programming/scripting/coding w/e you call it and w/e it is. )
And which is harder and requires more qualities ( skill, creativity, knowlegde, etc )?

It's because me and 3 classmates had an arguement on this topic. I got thorn apart because it was 3v1. Even if I said something legit they just ignored it and kept mocking me. I can bet they didn't even know/care what the truth actually was ( 2 of them ), they just wanted to mock someone.


Please include proofs in your comments. I really have to know this. Also, keep in mind that the 2 questions are separate. My personal opinion is that coding is harder ( requires more skill, knowledge and so on ) but ultimatelly creating new zones and tier sets takes more time no matter how good you are because the continents are huge and the items have many categories and classes to satisfy.

Hmmm.. well the art side does take a long time and has a lot to it, between the concept artists, modeling characters, environment, gear, etc, creating each and every animation, proper lighting, /cough creating a whole frigging world... Esp how they're creating the new character models, consider how long they've been working on just those, still.

Though I can't personally judge how hard the coding part of it is since I only know the art side of that kind of software, etc. I imagine it takes a while as well.

[hrugner]

Art will function the same for everyone.
Coding might have to take into account different operating systems, different hardware etc.
Art generally should not need debugged, as it should I believe be relatively easy to test if it does what it is meant to do, as the number of test cases would be more limited.
Art does not have a cascading effect on other areas, as the recent taint issue highlighted.
There is still some vanilla code lurking around that was handling a now non-existent Micromenu button for the map, for instance.

Art needs to be designed around a number of hardware constraints. You can't just design for one computer or you end up losing things. Lighting is the best example, as you can't use a texture that's lit purely by the engine, or people with that setting turned off will have very flat textures. There are also big issues with layering transparencies and what not.

I think the outtakes from Shrek do an entertaining job of showing the debugging process in 3d art. Then there's issues of building meshes that can be freely animated, which requires a fair amount of testing, then constraining your skeleton so as not to break immersion or just break the form. This comes up more if you want to use rag-doll physics in your game. Then issues with collision checking. It's a long list actually. Essentially, ever time you are creating a process for the art rather than manually creating the art, there will always be some debugging.

There are pretty limited issues of cascading art failure, I'll give you that. These usually have to do with changing timing, or changing something stupid like the texture size or resolution.

[edw]

In my opinion to compere the 2 is not possible, if they were from the same category sure, coding implies mathematics the study of algebra, algorithms and a straight forward thinking, learning complex programs while art implies visual experience, study of nature, free and creative thinking, a feeling for mixing different elements from history, culture, etc in to something unexpected.

[Moozhe]

How so? That's a nonsensical thing to say.

I mean in the context of game development. For example, something like the model of a boss in game is first drafted as a sketch. That part is about quality, and the vision for art in the game is usually the job of the Art Directors, of which there are generally few and they are well paid. But turning hand drawn concept art into a finished 3D model with animations is the part that takes 90% of the time. That's the kind of work that the vast majority of game artists do. I've worked with 3D modellers/animators, and watched them slaving away in Maya, getting every single vertex just right... Companies like Blizzard have an army of people like that. They're not superstars, they're not irreplaceable. But they generally cost a lot because you need so damn many of them. That's what I meant by quantity vs quality.

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Art needs to be designed around a number of hardware constraints. You can't just design for one computer or you end up losing things. Lighting is the best example, as you can't use a texture that's lit purely by the engine, or people with that setting turned off will have very flat textures. There are also big issues with layering transparencies and what not.

I think the outtakes from Shrek do an entertaining job of showing the debugging process in 3d art. Then there's issues of building meshes that can be freely animated, which requires a fair amount of testing, then constraining your skeleton so as not to break immersion or just break the form. This comes up more if you want to use rag-doll physics in your game. Then issues with collision checking. It's a long list actually. Essentially, ever time you are creating a process for the art rather than manually creating the art, there will always be some debugging.

There are pretty limited issues of cascading art failure, I'll give you that. These usually have to do with changing timing, or changing something stupid like the texture size or resolution.

What you're referring to is actually the programmer's job!

Programmers consume the art content done by artists. They set out constraints such as vertex limits. They take the raw content and convert it into the necessary formats. They program all the in game effects such as by coding shaders with the High-level shading language (HLSL).

A graphics programmer is not an artist. Although they will work together with the art directors to bring the vision to life.

[hrugner]

What you're referring to is actually the programmer's job!

Programmers consume the art content done by artists. They set out constraints such as vertex limits. They take the raw content and convert it into the necessary formats. They program all the in game effects such as by coding shaders with the High-level shading language (HLSL).

A graphics programmer is not an artist. Although they will work together with the art directors to bring the vision to life.

I'm not talking about any of those things actually. When I'm talking about building a texture that can function independently of lighting, I'm referring to using painting a mid-value texture that provides enough value difference regardless of whether or not your model will be receiving shadows and reflected lighting from itself or not. Then generating a separate texture for specular highlights and what not. If you are dealing with movie models where you have amazing amounts of processing power per frame, then yes, that's designed by an engineer. For the most part this isn't the case though. I did use a movie as the example, but only because their outtakes show many problems that crop up in the constraining and rigging department, though the hair ones are graphics programming failures certainly.

When I'm talking about constraining meshes I'm referring to rigging the model. This requires a fair bit of tedium in making sure your quads are lined up the right way and sufficiently numerous to survive the deforming. Then weight painting the model so it moves correctly with the changes in the bones. Then going through and making sure that none of those bones can move beyond certain break points so they don't intersect with the model or swing off at weird angles.

All of those things are either painting or animation.

Eventually, possibly even pretty soon, there won't be much of a difference in graphics programmer and 3d animator type jobs for games; but that's pretty far along the voxel emulation of flesh volume road. Still, if things progress as quickly in the next twenty years as they have in the previous twenty... who knows. I feel bad for any artists who skirted calculus, that's for sure.

[Kaleredar]

I mean in the context of game development. For example, something like the model of a boss in game is first drafted as a sketch. That part is about quality, and the vision for art in the game is usually the job of the Art Directors, of which there are generally few and they are well paid. But turning hand drawn concept art into a finished 3D model with animations is the part that takes 90% of the time. That's the kind of work that the vast majority of game artists do. I've worked with 3D modellers/animators, and watched them slaving away in Maya, getting every single vertex just right... Companies like Blizzard have an army of people like that. They're not superstars, they're not irreplaceable. But they generally cost a lot because you need so damn many of them. That's what I meant by quantity vs quality.

Everything I've ever heard from Blizzard implies the exact opposite... they don't have very many artists working for them. And transferring a design from a sketch to a computer isn't about giving some lowly peon a fancy schmancy piece of art and then expecting them to just diddle with triangles until it matches the picture. Are you going to hand a photograph to a toddler and expect them to reproduce the image verbatim just because they have it in front of them?

Art is art, all the way through. Designing a 3D model is about finessing the 3D model to look good as a 3D model, not just look like the sketch you seem to imply was "handed down" to them. You'll notice that many of Blizzard's concept sketches don't actually look exactly like their corresponding in-game models (if they made it into the game at all,) see... Vrykul, Val'kyr, buildings... really, ANYTHING... They show creative license all the way through.


And hell, if that were true, you could just as easily contend they have a whole room full of underpaid codemonkeys slaving away.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Everything I've ever heard from Blizzard implies the exact opposite... they don't have very many artists working for them. And transferring a design from a sketch to a computer isn't about giving some lowly peon a fancy schmancy piece of art and then expecting them to just diddle with triangles until it matches the picture. Are you going to hand a photograph to a toddler and expect them to reproduce the image verbatim just because they have it in front of them?

Art is art, all the way through. Designing a 3D model is about finessing the 3D model to look good as a 3D model, not just look like the sketch you seem to imply was "handed down" to them. You'll notice that many of Blizzard's concept sketches don't actually look exactly like their corresponding in-game models (if they made it into the game at all,) see... Vrykul, Val'kyr, buildings... really, ANYTHING... They show creative license all the way through.


And hell, if that were true, you could just as easily contend they have a whole room full of underpaid codemonkeys slaving away.

Given how the concept art and the actual "art" (I'd go for design here) are worlds apart I would like to agree with you, because they certainly don't make an as close as possible virtual replica of the 2d concept art.

Something I'd like to add in regards to programming: Wow certainly does have programming involved, but the majority of the things some here refer to are not really programming as much as clicking things together in an editor or writing scripts. Huge difference.

[ro9ue]

Different projects take different amounts of time, has nothing to do with what is "harder". I'm an artist and coder, both at a respectable level, and they are totally different animals.

Art is learning how to exactly box in wild creativity. Coding is learning how to be wildly creative in an exact box.